Jim DeMint to resign to head Heritage Foundation

Sen. Jim DeMint’s abrupt resignation Thursday from his Senate seat to run the conservative Heritage Foundation will leave the chamber without its leading tea party voice and potentially reverberate in GOP Senate primaries across the country.

The South Carolina Republican announced that he’d replace Ed Feulner as president of The Heritage Foundation in January.

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DeMint: 'I can do a lot more on the outside' than in the inside

DeMint on leaving, GOP mistake

Demint on conservative values

“This is a critical time for America and there is no organization in the country, in fact, the world, that is better positioned to convince the American people that the conservative policies that The Heritage Foundation has developed over the years are the solutions to the problems that we face as a nation,” DeMint told a handful of reporters after he was introduced to staffers at the foundation’s headquarters just blocks from the Senate.

“This family of conservatives here at The Heritage Foundation helped to shape my own views,” he added. “They inspired me to run for Congress in the first place, and they’re in a position now to carry the message that we need to carry to the American people.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said DeMint called him Thursday morning to tell him he was stepping down.

“We’re sorry to see Jim go. He’s had a distinguished career,” McConnell told POLITICO in a brief interview. “My wife [Elaine Chao] is a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation. She’ll be reporting to him.”

In an earlier written statement, DeMint said it had been an honor to serve the people of South Carolina for the past eight years but “now it’s time for me to pass the torch to someone else and take on a new role in the fight for America’s future.

“I’m leaving the Senate now, but I’m not leaving the fight,” he said.

DeMint also appears poised for a raise, with Feulner pulling in $1.03 million in 2010, according to public records. DeMint earned $174,000 in 2012 as a senator.

At Heritage headquarters north of the Capitol, dozens of staffers filed into a first-floor auditorium to hear the announcement directly from DeMint, whose muffled voice could be heard emanating from the room. Several speeches were punctuated by laughter and applause.

The mistake the GOP made over the past four years, DeMint told reporters, was focusing too much on what the party was against rather than putting forth “bold ideas to get people inspired and behind us.”

“Heritage has those ideas,” he said, sporting a blue Heritage tie with liberty bells. “I honestly believe I can do a lot more on the outside than I can on the inside.”

Thank god this Tea Bagging clown is leaving...that's another one down. Let's get rid of two more so that DeMint and Allen West can have a foursome for bridge. That is, assuming he and West even know how to play bridge.

Jim Demint is a CINO — conservative in name only. Truth be told he is a hard right ideologue who doesn't believe that anybody not as rigid as he has anything worthwhile to say. He's part of the reason that long-time Buckley Republicans like me left the party in droves in recent years. Demint scorned science, vilified honorable people like Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe, and made it a practice to demean the President. Whatever honor the Heritage Foundation once had is now gone forever.

I am totally sure many sane republicans, who would like to work constructively to push the nation toward fiscal solvency, will be relieved to see him go. Privately. In public, they will mouth the ritual "grateful for his service to his country", etc.

In truth, the republican party has been prevented from adapting more nimbly to a changing America, by the fire- breathing "tea party" types, who threaten any deviation from hardline opposition to any and all democrat policy, with a primary challenge, or cutting off RNC funding, etc.

Unfortunately, due to the tidal wave of poor brown people from the 3rd world, and 3 generations of young white Americans propagandized by the education establishment to regard "government" as the answer to all problems, America is no longer a center-right country.

Realistically, I believe we have to regard the majority of the new American population as leftists, in their essential political orientation. They were never taught about why America was founded. They do not understand, or care about, freedom. They have been taught from the first grade that they have "rights", and those "rights" have been expanded continuously by the leftist democrats. It is now taken for granted that Americans have a "right" to housing, free health-care, money to live on whether they work or not, and most of all, a right to not be "offended", by older white Americans, who were raised in the old, traditional America.

So good luck Demint. You will need it. So will we who still believe in free markets and limited government.

This is a great day for America. Having DeMint leave the Senate is a huge step forward for America. Losing one of the most uniformed but ideologically loud voices in the Senate may once again allow reason and thought to come to what once was a great deliberative body.

For all you progressives who are cheering, you might hold your enthusiasm. Jim is going to remain a central figure in the news and in Congress. In fact, he might be even more influential working from outside the government.